Becca Bailey

About Me

I'm a software engineer, writer, and speaker who works at the intersection of developer experience, technical communication, and humane systems.

I've spent the last decade building web platforms, design systems, developer tools, and more recently AI-enabled products. Along the way I've led small teams, mentored engineers, and learned that the hardest problems are rarely purely technical — they're about how systems shape the people who have to live inside them.

I'm drawn to messy, cross-functional work: accessibility that actually sticks, design systems that teams want to use, AI with real guardrails, and software that holds up over time. If that sounds like what you're working on, I'd love to hear from you.

Becca Bailey speaking into a microphone on stage

Where I've worked

Hive-ly

CTO & Lead Engineer · Remote · 2025–2026

I joined Hive-ly early to help build a legal-tech platform for workers documenting workplace issues and connecting with attorneys — work that sits at an uncomfortable intersection of product, ethics, and regulation. I set up how we shipped (standards, observability, deployment), built AI workflows for legal documents and case narratives, and spent a lot of time with legal advisors and advocates making sure what we built was accurate, safe, and actually usable.

Cisco (ThousandEyes)

Senior Software Engineer · Seattle · 2023–2025

On the UXE platform team, I helped grow the shared design system and data visualization infrastructure behind ThousandEyes. Most of my energy went into making accessibility and consistency something teams could rely on at scale — not a checklist at the end of a sprint, but part of how people already worked.

Formidable

Seattle · 2019–2023

I grew from engineer to team lead to engineering manager, working with clients on React, Next.js, and performance-heavy frontends. I managed teams of two to six, led a web vitals engagement with a large e-commerce company, and maintained Victory — Formidable's open-source charting library. I also did a fellowship on data visualization at scale, which is still how I think about charts and the main thread.

The Mom Project

Software Engineer · Chicago · Summer 2019

A short stint between Formidable and my earlier Chicago years: shipping features on a Rails and React codebase and writing a JavaScript style guide so the team had something consistent to point to.

8th Light

Chicago · 2016–2019

This is where I learned to be a software craftsperson — apprenticeship, client work across React, Angular, Ruby, and Java, then leading a front-end team and mentoring people through 8th Light's apprenticeship program. It shaped how I still think about code review, teaching, and leaving things better than I found them.

Before software

Music and fine arts teacher · 2011–2015

I taught music, art, and drama to K–12 students in Chicago and a year in Quetzaltenango, Guatemala. I have a degree in music education from Anderson University and a crash course in web development from Dev Bootcamp. The teaching years still show up in how I explain things and how I work with teams.

Work With Me

Available for speaking engagements, technical writing, developer education, podcast appearances, and selective consulting opportunities.

Send an email